


of parents and children

by softshark



Series: parent and child fics [1]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-15 19:00:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17534438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softshark/pseuds/softshark
Summary: small collection of one shots about parents and their children of middle earth.





	1. nerdanel and feanor - crafting new life.

**Author's Note:**

> chapters will be rated and given warnings individually, and the characters and ships will be noted in the chapter titles.  
> btw- this was previously a collection of various >1k word one shots from across the first age and beyond, entitled "snippets of life in aman and beleriand"... but everything i'd written for it was about parents and kids. so i decided to change it. sorry for the confusion!! i'll be making a fic series for that later.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> fëanor and nerdanel welcome their new son.

Fëanáro’s throat was dry, his Adam’s apple bobbing helplessly, and he told himself the dryness was the reason he was incapable of creating words, because words were, and had always been, his greatest power… And it was impossible to fathom that that power was failing him…. But it was the truth, the tiny bundle of elf in his arms had utterly robbed him of his beloved words, of his power.He was an extremely young father, by elven standards, his father had been centuries older than him when he was born, but Fëanáro had always charged into everything, head first, his entire life. He had known Nerdanel was the spouse for him as soon as he met her… why wait? And when they had been married, why wait for a child? But here he was, Fëanáro’s son, and Fëanáro felt… young, and helpless. He could feel the echoes of his own fëa in the child, and he could feel Nerdanel as well, and he could feel that flare of spirit that was uniquely the child’s own.

Fëanáro leaned down and kissed his brow, breathlessly he said, “You shall be great, yondoya. You will make the earth move and entire people’s will follow the power of your fëa and your words…”  
“He will be beautiful, Fëanáro.” Nerdanel said wearily. Fëanáro looked up at her. Her voice sounded tired, but she was sitting up, strong. The fire that burned, always, in Fëanáro’s heart blazed, suddenly, for her.  
Many said she was ugly, her strong bone structure and the countless splatters of freckles across the skin all over her body, so typical of Mahtan’s people, were viewed as unbecoming in one of the Quendi, particularly in an elleth. But Fëanáro had never been so shallow, or singularly minded; and if he was fire, she was clay, which does not bend to the whims of fire the way stone, ore, and iron do, but harnesses it, growing stronger and more beautiful by its hand. There would be no other for him, there could not be.  
“Aye,” Fëanáro said, bouncing the baby, “Already he is the most handsome babe I have ever seen.”  
“Have you seen many babes?” Nerdanel laughed.  
He shot her a hard look, “My father has 4 other children, I was there for all their births, and none of them came anywhere near to my son’s beauty…. Nolofinwë was particularly ugly.”  
“Oh, but he has grown up so handsome, Fëanáro. Perhaps then our son will be the reverse.”  
Fëanáro made no comment, but glared at her, and she settled back into her pillows.  
“No, he will grow up to be stunning, he will have all your beauty.”  
“A piece of craft is only as beautiful as it’s makers skills might allow, regardless of how fine the material. Our son is beautiful, for his mother is great.”  
She smiled at the baby, “He is a well-formed little figure, isn’t he?” She murmured.  
“Aye,” Fëanáro said again, softly, “and it maybe that he has my beauty, but he looks like you.... The flame of your hair, the structure of your face.”  
“He is ours, Fëanáro.”  
“The greatest work of the two greatest craftsman of all the Noldor,” He said with a wicked grin.  
She laughed, “You flatter yourself, and me, loved one…. But ai, I can think of no one thing greater that I have ever made… Though I long to make more. More children, I mean.”  
Fëanáro looked up again, with a frown. “Can you bear it?” He murmured.

 

“I am not your mother, Fëanáro.” Nerdanel said, flatly, “I cannot know what pain she endured, nor why, but I am certain that the pain would have existed regardless of what child she bore. Bearing your children is no great danger.”  
She reached out, “I know you fear yourself, though you would never admit it, but I do not fear you… Little harm could you ever do to me, least of all by way of the wonders of creating a child.”  
Fëanáro seized her hand then, and kissed it, “My Nerdanel….”  
The baby began to cry, an unpleasant sound, and Fëanáro pulled back to turn his attention to it, “Hush, sh, one so beautiful should not make such displeasing sounds.” He raised the baby up so he could see his father’s face more clearly. “Do not cry, Nelyafinwë…”  
“Nelyafinwë?” She asked, brows raised.  
Fëanáro didn’t turn to look at her, “His grandfather is Finwë, and his father is Curufinwë, why should he not be Nelya?”  
Nerdanel made no comment but listened as Fëanáro murmured a few more of his beautiful words to the baby and kissed his brow.  
“It would seem that the power of your words works even on a baby. How fearful.”  
Nerdanel commented, readjusting more comfortably in her pillows, then closing her eyes. “Even still, perhaps the next child we shall endeavor to make a child shall be beautiful not his form, but in his voice… So that even the sound of his cries might be music.” She cracked an eye open and gave a mischievous grin, “Should his father not be there to soothe him.”  
“Do not tempt me, Nerdanel, with the idea that we may have some influence in crafting our children, less the urge to create them never be quieted in me, or you, and it may be we never stop having children.”  
“Oh,” she said, eyes fluttering close and beginning to drift, “How many babies could we even have? It seems the upwards limits for you race is 4…. I suppose my body would simply stop, after a while.”  
Fëanáro gave a non-committal hmmm, continue to bounce his baby, and to dream of a whole brood of children, just as wonderful as this one.


	2. little star - maglor and arwen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is not aman or beleriand but... alas. close enough. maglor adoring his new grandaughter.  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a few things to note:  
> i personally believe, based off of a line from the unpublished silm that chris tolkien omitted, that maglor lived with elrond through the third age, then sailed west with him.  
> pityelde is quenya for little star/little elf; tindomiel is the daughter of elros. it means morning star whereas undomiel means evening star.

The little baby made blooing and cooing and happy chirping sounds down at Maglor.  
“Hello my princess, my little Evening Star.” He pressed his nose into her happy, chubby cheek, and she continued her happy noises, filling his heart with the joy of song it hadn’t known in many years.  
Her cooed back at her, “Many stars shone down on the hour of your birth, such a blessing you are, little one, you brilliant star.”  
Arwen flapped her hands eagerly, reach out and grabbing a fist full of black hair to yank on.  
“You are related, in some way, to every hero, king, queen, leader and legend of this world by one way or another. From all three houses of the Edain, from the blood of the Ainur themselves, and all three kindreds of the elves… And through them, too, you have the two greatest houses of Finwë. Fingolfin the great warrior king, and Finarfin the wise and enduring are your grandsires.”  
Lowering her down on to his lap he smiled. “And through me,” He booped her nose, “You have some connection to the House of Fëanor…. Though let us all be thankful it is not through blood.”  
“Aaaah… Ah!” The baby in his lap expressed back, and Maglor’s heart seemed to suddenly be made of pure love. Children had always been a great joy to him. Some of the brightest moments in his life had been the birth of his brothers, his nephew, and the finding of his twins, but something about her was special. So special. He thinks, maybe, it could be that she was a girl. A princess. Countless boys had been born to his family, but only one girl, before her. He ran his hand over her eyebrows and smiled softly. It was a joy similar to what he felt when Tindomiel had been born, but even more intense, somehow. Perhaps its because this one was an elf, bound to the same fate as him, his to protect forever. There wasn’t the melancholy that came with Tindomiel’s birth, knowing that in the blink of an eye she would age, and die, and go where he could not find her. Arwen would be with him always.  
“I will not let you down, pityelde. I told your brothers this, I have lost all my kin over the course of my life, I let them all down, and watched them die. But there was a day, long ago, when I threw a star, a thing of pure light and beauty, into the sea and chose love, instead. I decided to stop being a coward and allowing others to dictate my choices out of my own fear and weakness. And I did that for you, for your father, and for all whom I failed. My beautiful little star,” he kissed her again, “Undomiel, shall I call you. Like your cousin. The first star in my sky, the light of a new hope and a new age, you shall guide and light the last darkening ages of my life and of your people.”  
She looked up at him with wide eyes. They were the eyes of men. When his grandsons were born, the Elven ones, he marveled how their eyes reminded him of his uncle and cousins of the House of Finarfin, but this one, this child…. They seemed like her uncle’s eyes, Edain eyes. It unsettled him.  
Pushing the feelings away, he began to sing to her, a song of sleep, and he broke off in laughter for a moment, impressed by her sheer force of will at resisting a song of power, for a baby. Her uncle Elros was the same way. He continued, determinedly, eventually getting her to sleep.  
She was beautiful, truly. More beautiful than a Silmaril, more blessed and hallowed and far more precious. He would choose her, her father, and her brothers over the Silmarils everyday, for the rest of eternity. Oath be damned, love would over power wretched things born in darkness, everyday.


End file.
